Too close to call...well, I like to think so!

Screenwriting has kept me away from posting more blogs all this time.

Speaking of screenwriting...you can't really write a better script than the way this season's two NCAA Division 1 basketball tournaments have been turning out.

Okay...I'm cheating...I'm typing this during the third quarter of the North Carolina State-South Carolina women's basketball game. But I'm still going to go out on a limb and make predictions for how college hoops' final six games of 2023-24 will turn out.

Here goes: WOMEN: South Carolina over North Carolina State, Connecticut over Iowa (but I smell a Hawkeye victory tonight over the Huskies), then the Gamecocks staying unbeaten at the expense of the Huskies...whose 2015-16 team was the last D-1 squad, men's or women's, to get through unscathed.

MEN: Connecticut over Alabama, North Carolina State over Purdue...followed by the Huskies taking the Wolfpack down on 4-8-2024 for a second consecutive title (something not done in D-1 men's hoops since Florida doubled up in 2005-06 and 2006-07).

But what a season it's been...especially with Iowa's Caitlin Clark breaking records left and right and Purdue's Zach Edey picking up where he left off.

And we're at a point in the season where any of those eight teams could win it all.

Well...time for me to get back to the South Carolina-NC State game. But before I go...I can't help but ask:

Which teams do YOU think will win it all here in 2023-24?

Vive la difference!

Great to see some different teams than the usual ones win regionals in this season's NCAA Division 1 men's and women's basketball tournaments.

No Number One seeds left at the moment in the NCAA D-1 men's tourney (Alabama, Purdue, Houston, and defending champion Kansas all went down before the regional finals)...and two remaining in the NCAA D-1 women's tourney (Virginia Tech and last season's champ, still-unbeaten South Carolina).

The Hokies and Gamecocks spearhead a women's D-1 Final Four that includes a Louisiana State team that hadn't won a regional final since 2008...and an Iowa squad making just its second trip to the women's D-1 Final Four. (The first happened in 1993.)

Now...how about the D-1 men's side? Three teams in the men's D-1 Final Four for the first time ever!

Two of those first-time teams (Florida Atlantic and San Diego State) taste it up tomorrow...when Miami (FL) takes on one of its old rival from its Big East days, Connecticut. That's right...a University of Connecticut basketball team made the Final Four after all.

Dan Hurley's...not Geno Auriemma's. So...2022-23 is the first season the Huskies' men's team got to a Final Four since 2014 and the first campaign where the Huskies' women's squad got left out of a Final Four since 2007. And, here in 2022-23, not a single Number One seed among the men's D-1 regional semifinalists...a first. All right...I'm going to try some predictions about the last team standing in each D-1 NCAA tourney this season. WOMEN: Louisiana State over Virginia Tech, South Carolina over Iowa...and then on Sunday, an all-SEC final in which Dawn Staley's Gamecocks make it back-to-back titles.

MEN: Florida Atlantic over San Diego State, Connecticut over Miami (FL)...with Hurley's squad cutting down the nets late Monday night for its first title since 2011.

The watchdogs chalk it all up to the transfer portal...something that's redistributed the talent in both women's and men's Division 1 hoops. (You know what I say? Right on for the portal!)

I'm going to be watching...hope you'll be watching, too.

The countdown is over

I needed to let you know that, due to a bunch of personal issues (most of them job-related, some related to finances, some even church-related), I've decided to stop holding the Ragtime to Riches Festival. The continuing pandemic sure hasn't helped, as it wiped out what would've been the 2020 and 2021 R to R events. Still...I'm thankful for everyone who attended the festival since its 2005 inception, and I'm thankful for every performer who did the festival. Haven't dropped music for good, because I'm still going to the Pink Poodle Steakhouse in Crescent, IA to perform on the last Sunday of the month. (Hope to see you there!)

Lookbook #2- "Rivertown Rock!"

I've been wanting to put up this lookbook for some time...and I would've kicked the idea to the curb if it weren't for the way you responded to the "Really Old School" lookbook and its video counterpart.

In 1992, I wrote a screenplay called "Rivertown Rock!" In it, I wanted to take a look at how music's British Invasion affected teenagers here in America's Midwest in general...and one family in particular. Always wanted to take a look at it through a screenplay of mine.

I wouldn't have started a record collection if the invasion weren't a catalyst...and maybe you began collecting 45s and albums back then, too, because of groups like the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five and the Rolling Stones.

Well, after getting feedback through Stage 32, I decided to revise that script of mine (same for "Really Old School" and two others)...and now, through sources like Network ISA, I'm looking for a producer who'd like to film it. (I've already submitted five screenplays of mine through ISA...and got yet to hear from any producers. That's okay...that's the way the system is.)

Here's the "Rivertown Rock!" logline:

It's Sunday, 2-9-1964...when the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show inspires a Sioux City, IA teenager to start her own rock group and show that girls can play the music, too.

I'm Jim Boston...thanks so much for reading this blog!

A tale of two ragtime festivals (Part 1)

Well...it seems as if two ragtime festivals took place here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area last weekend.

But one and the same got on the books: The 2019 Ragtime to Riches Festival.

This year's was the first two-day version since the 2010 edition...the fourth and last R to R held at the Strauss Performing Arts Center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. (UNO priced the Strauss Center out of the Great Plains Ragtime Society's reach not long afterwards, so the local rag club had to find another place for the fest.)

Since 2011, R to R has taken place at Omaha's First Central Congregational United Church of Christ. 

This year, First Central got a Saturday partner: The Pink Poodle Steakhouse in Crescent, IA.

On 7-13-2019, at 5:00 PM (Central time), a "Tune-Ups Party" took place at the legendary Crescent restaurant...the eatery with some of the best prime rib in the Omaha Metro and three working antique upright player pianos.

And all three old uprights got a workout...especially the middle one, a 1913 Bellmann. (The others are a 1919 Gulbransen and a 1916 Ricca & Son.)

In the photo above, the Bellmann is on the left, the Ricca's on the right.

In the publicity for the "Tune-Ups Party," it was said that at least one of this year's featured R to R 15.0 performers would play at the Pink Poodle during an event modeled after a similar one...the Thursday night tune-ups that kick off the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival.

If it hadn't been for two little girls (Maddie and Brooke) and the mother of another little girl (a youngster named Echo; I wish I knew her mom's name) stepping up to tickle the keys, I would've played the entire length of the Pink Poodle tune-ups.

Three hours. 

I still had lots of fun at the Poodle, and- equally important- the restaurant's dining room was half full of customers.

 

When I come back, I'll tell you what R to R's 2019 Sunday session was like. 

 

And what's more, the school didn't look the same!

Well, it was Sunday, 9-23-2018...the third and final day of the Class of 1973's 45th get-together in the Des Moines area.

This time, the final major activity of the reunion was scheduled to take place at the very school itself: West Des Moines Dowling Catholic High School. 

Nope...not a pep rally.

No, not another sports event.

It was a Mass.

And two of our classmates- now men of the cloth- were tabbed to say that morning's Mass.  

But first...it was time for interested classmates to tour the very school that gave so many of us so many great, great memories. (This was the tour that was originally scheduled for the previously Friday afternoon.)

And, thanks to a recent construction project, the physical plant at 1400 Buffalo Rd. is bigger and better than before. 

Our host for the understandably brief tour was Ron Gray...the longtime (and legendary) DCHS head wrestling coach who's now the longest-tenured teacher in school history. 

He's been at it for a whopping 41 years!

We got a chance to tour the hallways (lockers, trophy case, and all) and Ron's classroom. (By the way...in addition to currently being the school's head boys' golf coach and head girls' golf coach, he teaches economics and social studies.)

What if we'd had this kind of a classroom back in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

Okay...it's not really the size of the classroom (or style of classroom) that counts.

Now it was 10:30 AM...and time for Mass.

I hadn't been to an out-of-town one since Saturday, 6-11-2005.

It's a long story (and a possible blog post in itself), but after high school, I largely stopped going to church (only to go back to Mass on visits to Des Moines while an Iowa State student). 

I'd had my fill of the downbeat messages the monsignor at the Catholic church I was going to in DSM was giving his parishioners. (Whenever the church wasn't taking in enough money to suit the monsignor there, he'd tell the churchgoers: "You're throwing defiles in God's face!")

I switched to the Unitarian Universalist Church not long after I first moved to Omaha in 1980...only because First Unitarian is within walking distance of where I first lived when I moved to the Big O on 8-2-1980. (I moved back here on 3-29-1997.)

Moved to Sioux City, IA on 6-30-1988 to manage a used-record-and-tape store...and spent the next five years and two months shunning church services.

All this time, though, I'd still go into church basements and get some practice in on those congregations' old-fashioned upright pianos (something I started doing in October 1976, back in Ames). 

Well, that all changed in February 1994.

That was the month I decided to fill up the hole in my life and join the United Methodist Church.

I've felt more comfortable as a United Methodist than I ever did as a Catholic. 

Even so, that wasn't going to stop me from participating in a Mass that Jim Gould and Dennis Wright were to preside over.

It was supposed to be Mike Peters teaming up with fellow Catholic priest Jim G., but Mike P. got called away to another assignment.

So Dennis W., now a deacon in the Des Moines area, took Mike's place. (I remember Dennis' cartoons in the school newspaper...the publication originally called The Aquin but renamed The Paper once the old, all-boys' Dowling merged with the all-girls' St. Joseph Academy in time for the 1972-73 school year and set up shop on Buffalo Rd. in the 'burbs.)  

The Mass took place at DCHS' brand-new St. Joseph Chapel, a much bigger one than the chapel that originally came with the new Dowling.

And it went beautifully...from Julie Russell Craven's music (she played the hymns on an electronic keyboard) to Jim G.'s homily to everything else. 

Once the service- meant to honor the 29 classmates who've passed away- was finished, we went right to the school lobby for coffee and donuts.

This coffee-and-donuts session was more enjoyable than those I was able to attend when I was younger and going to a church whose top priest railed away about all those defiles. 

Tom Meyer, Ron G., Jim G., Dennis W., Julie R., hubby David Craven, and I got together with Joni Hockins Edwards, Lisa Lamberto (one of Joni's fellow cheerleaders), Meg Tibbetts Williams, Margo Munoz O'Meara (never had a chance to see her at the other reunion events), and so many other classmates to talk up old memories and current goings-on. 

We had such a great time that our time together ran into overtime...and the DCHS Class of 1973's 45th Reunion broke up around 12:15 PM.

All I can say is:

Please, please, PLEASE let circumstances allow me to get to the 50th Class of '73 get-together! 

About that Mass I went to on 6-11-2005: The Mass was actually a wedding of Matt and Liz, a young couple I met earlier that year at the Omaha Children's Museum. (From October 1997 to June 2006, I volunteered at the OCM, where they let me entertain visitors of all ages on an old-fashioned upright piano in the museum's music room. The best part of it all: When I wasn't playing, I got a chance to hear the children and some of the adults they brought with them tickle those ancient keys.) 

After they heard me play, Liz and Matt invited me to perform at their wedding reception. I said "yes," and on the second Saturday in June that year, I traveled to Shenandoah, IA, to watch the two of them become husband and wife.

I'm Jim Boston...thanks for reading this blog!